Page 30 - bneMag February 2021_20210202

30 I Cover story bne February 2021
soon became clear that we were headed to Ostankino, the home of Russia’s national broadcaster and the TV tower that dominates Moscow’s skyline in the north of the city.
Rutskoi had called for his supporters to take over the TV stations and call on the entire country to rise up and take control of regional government.
At this point I should point out this is a textbook example of iniating a coup d'état.
However, the police had got wind of Rutskoi’s plan (there were almost certainly undercover agents in the crowd at the White House) and the OMON and special forces also raced to Ostakino, arriving
a few minutes before Rutskoi’s men and taking up position in the foyer of the building and windows on the floors above.
By this time it was early evening and the sun had just gone down. Our taxi driver dropped us off at the start of the road that leads to the TV tower, where a bus had been overturned and pushed across the road. (That bus was left for years
in the courtyard of the cultural museum on Tverskaya as a reminder of the October events).
A crowd of people were cowering behind the bus as a firefight had broken out between the OMON and Rutskoi’s men. You could hear the rat-tat-tat of Kalashnikovs coming out of the darkness from under the trees ahead but could see nothing. The temptation was to
go around the bus to get a closer look. My colleague at the Daily Telegraph, Marcus Warren, later explained to
me why freelancers are in much more danger in warzones than staffers, as it
is the freelancers that go round the bus because of this urge, while the staffers stay at the back or in their offices and watch the events on TV.
The situation got rapidly more dangerous. First someone started firing a machine gun with tracer bullets over the bus. You could see streams of bullets flying overhead in what was probably a move to prevent more reinforcements moving up into position outside the TV tower.
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Then I started to hear a “ziiiiip” sound around us. My Spanish colleague Angela Alonso was the first to realise what was happening and hit the deck: snipers had worked their way round to the side of the bus and were now starting to fire into the crowd sheltering behind it.
By this time the ambulances had
started to arrive. Groups of men were appearing out of the darkness under the trees carrying the wounded, who were bundled into the waiting ambulances and driven off at high speed, sirens wailing.
Dozens of people were killed that night at Ostankino – the official death
have been flooded with fighters in the morning and a serious uprising that would have led to widespread street fighting throughout the capital could have started in the morning.
It didn't happen, as in the small hours of the morning the gravel-voiced General Alexander Lebed, who had command
of a tank brigade barracked just outside Moscow, came down on the side of Yeltsin.
Svetlana Ivanova, my later landlady of my apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospect, the eight-lane spoke road that leads to the White House, recalled that night: “We were woken very early in morning,
“Snipers had worked their way round to the side of the bus and were now starting to fire into the crowd sheltering behind it”
count was 46 dead – including British cameraman Rory Peck, who was a freelance war reporter working for the German station ZDF. The Frontline Club in London by St Mary’s Hospital was founded in Peck’s memory by his colleague Vaughan Smith and today has some of Peck’s memorabilia, and that
of other war correspondent freelancers killed in action, on display in the cabinets in the clubroom.
At this point we decided things were getting too hairy and walked back down the road to find another car to take
us home. What shocked me later was how unafraid I felt during this whole experience. It was my first time under fire, but with bullets flying around
you, you become so pumped up by adrenalin that you don't feel fear. I was seriously considering walking around the bus but only common sense (and the lack of a serious string at that point) were what stopped me. I should have been terrified.
Shelling the White House
On the night of October 3 Russia was at a tipping point. Things could have gone either way. Rutskoi had failed to take Ostankino but the streets could
about four I think, to the sound of tanks driving down the road to the White House.”
As the sun came up Lebed had stationed five tanks on the bridge overlooking
the White House and troops and more tanks had taken up position on the embankment facing the building on the opposite side of the Moskva.
Then they opened up, sending shells into the upper floors of the building to minimise casualties but to disorientate the defenders of the White House, who were mostly on the lower floors. The building quickly caught fire.
The people from the picket from
around the building took refuge on the embankment under the bridge, but
they were still exposed to the snipers. According to the official report 147 people were killed and another 437 wounded. Unofficial sources put the death count far higher. It was the bloodiest violent conflict since the 1917 revolution.
We didn't go down to the White House that day, despite the fact you could clearly hear the shelling going on just down the road. The occupying forces of